


In Your Multitudes

by Savageandwise



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grey Jedi, Kylo Ren/Rey - Freeform, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-28 11:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13270692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: Sometimes he caught flashes of her. As he went about his day, his brain would be assaulted with countless tiny details, countless little tastes of her.Ben Solo after the events of The Last Jedi.





	In Your Multitudes

**Author's Note:**

> This is like my test run... my first Star Wars fic.
> 
> I've been a fan of Star Wars since I first saw the Original Trilogy waaay back when I was a kid. I love what they're doing with new films. Anyway. Let me know what you think. I might have a few more in me.

He dreamed of her floating again, her grey garments ballooning about her. There was no wind in space so everything was frozen in place. Frozen. She was covered in glitter, covered in ice. From the top of her elaborate hairstyle, to her fingertips, to the toes of her functional boots. She'd always emphasised practical footwear. 

"How are you going to run, Ben, if you can't walk?” 

At the same time she'd taught him not to run. _Stick to your guns. Stand by your decisions. Don't stop until you've won._ She was such a contradiction.

Dad had taught him other things. _Grab what you can and don't look back. It's not stealing, it’s redistribution. When the going gets tough… lightspeed._

Why didn't you make the jump, Mom? Why didn't you run?

He knew why. She knew they could track her. Of course she did. 

She looked like a space angel, like a creature from a story. The creatures of legend that deep space travellers saw when they'd been out too long without contact with the living. He felt it in his chest before he saw her hand move. The Force tugging at his heart, that familiar ache. Leia was so strong in the Force he could barely feel her straining, like she was swatting away a fly or pulling an object towards her. The Force was backwards. The more you used it the stronger it grew inside you. He could feel it, limitless, too large to be quantified. It used to make him feel like it could split his skin at the seams. Like he'd explode with it. He'd worried about it as a kid but Uncle Luke told him it didn't work like that. 

“It's part of you. Inside and out, all around. It's what keeps you separate from everything else. That tree. That bird, me, your mother.” 

He wanted to know where Leia had learned all this control. He wanted to know who taught her how to fly like that, arrow straight, her eyes open, unblinking. He'd rarely seen her use the Force, growing up. Uncle Luke had been the one to tell him she had it. Stronger even than Luke. It was just lying there unused, untapped. 

“I want to know why you're wasting it!” he'd demanded of her. “Why you would ignore it when you have all this power?” 

“There are different kinds of power,” she'd explained. “If I had started down that path I would never have found the strength to keep on fighting for the Republic.” 

The Jedi’s path meant giving up things, material things, the concept of land, the pride you felt for your planet, your star system. These things were ephemeral. All that remained was the Force, the Balance. A Jedi was a sentinel, not a warrior. A Jedi only fought to maintain that balance. 

Leia didn't want to stand back and let the Galaxy right itself. She didn't want the bones to set wrong. She wanted to break and splint them, force the dislocated parts back where they belonged.

 _Grab what you can, don't look back. Blast ‘em before they can get you in the back._ It wasn't the Jedi way. It was a smuggler’s way. It was a rebel’s way. It was the path that led to the Dark Side.

How are we so very different? That's what he wanted to know. Both of us sensed Luke's way was bantha poodoo.

“You are different. She wants what's good for the Galaxy. You only want what's good for yourself.” 

Rey’s voice startled him awake. Ben laughed out loud and sat up in bed so the sheet fell away. He was naked under it, but he didn’t care if it made her uncomfortable. 

“You're not her son. He’s gone. You don't deserve to be her son."

“You think that's how it works? If that's how it worked you wouldn't have been born to scum like them. Or else you wouldn't have been filled with the Force like this. With all this raw power.” He meant to sound harsh, unforgiving but he couldn't keep the wonder out of his voice.

He could feel her staring at him. Her gaze made him feel weightless, as though he too could fly through space on the wings of the Force. 

“I thought I'd broken it,” Rey whispered. 

She looked sad. He wondered if she regretted her decision the way he regretted his.

“The thing between… the connection…” he stuttered.

“The bond,” she finished. “I tried to break it. I pictured a laser sword and severed it with my mind.”

_Strike me down in anger and I'll always be with you._

“I don't think that's how it works.”

He wasn't angry with her for not joining him. His anger had flared bright and then flickered out, cold as a dead star. This wasn't anger – it was loneliness, it was emptiness. He remembered how it felt to fight by her side, how the Force flowed through them seamlessly, as though they were one entity. It was the most intimate he had ever been with another lifeform. Even their breathing had been completely in sync. He'd known her moves before he'd known his own. He wasn't angry. He couldn't cut her off any more than he could cut off his own hand.

“You need to help me,” she said. 

She looked different, older. She looked like she wasn't sleeping enough. Her hair was longer, she'd piled it on top of her head, like she was trying to imitate Leia. 

“Help you?”

“Help me break it.”

Sometimes he caught flashes of her. As he went about his day, his brain would be assaulted with countless tiny details, countless little tastes of her. The way she slept with her legs curled together and her hand gripping the side of the pallet like she needed to be ready to push herself up and catapult into action at any moment.

She smelled of earth and clean cotton. Her hair smelled a little of sweat. It was clean but she didn't wash it daily. She rinsed it, sparingly, with water. To her water was still a precious commodity, more precious than jewels. He wondered if she'd ever bonded with Luke over this. Jakku was similar to Tatooine, both desolate desert planets where every scrap of civilisation had to fight tooth and nail against being reclaimed by the elements. He knew she sometimes dreamed of dying of hunger and thirst. She hamstered rations away as if she was anxious the next meal might be a long time coming.

She was so lonely. He felt it in her. A constant ache that only needed one quick turn of a key to unleash the Dark within her. She could be so strong in the Dark Side of the Force if she only used that loneliness. But she wouldn't, and he loved that about her too.

She was angry at him still, but she fought against it. He could feel it spilling over inside her like blood from a wound. She would staunch the flow only for it to well up again as soon as she removed the pressure.

“It's okay. Claim that anger… use it…It’s yours, it comes from you...”

“It leads to the Dark Side,” Rey spat, gritting her teeth.

She imagined her arm around his neck, squeezing the life out of him. He laughed gently. Imagined twisting her arm easily and turning so they were face to face, so close now they could feel each other's breath. She smothered the illusion with one quick motion of her hand.

“It comes from you. It's how you feel. It's not some evil, mystical force. It's just feelings. Why are you so angry, anyway? Because of Luke? I didn't kill him.”

“It's because… how could you do this to her? Doesn't she mean anything to you? She gave you life!” She was struggling to modulate her tone, desperate not to cry the way she had when she had asked him why he hated his father. It was clear she'd claimed Leia as a sort of mother-figure. Many did. Like that pilot, Poe.

Ben was familiar with his mother's power over people. How she used every aspect of herself to manipulate everyone around her. The Mother. The Crone. The Princess. The Warrior. The Priestess. She had a face for everyone, depending on what they needed to see. People were willing to kill for her. They were willing to die for her, those little rebels of hers. How was she any different from him? If anything he was less adept at manipulation. He was a novice. Was that what a crusader for the Light did? She lied to them. The way she'd lied to him. The way she'd used him. Part of him admired her still, longed for her to be proud of him. Part of him would still die for her. 

“You're jealous! That's what this is,” Rey said accusingly. “You wish you were half the leader she is.”

The exchange was dizzying. Half in, half out of their thoughts, taunting him with shadows. He wanted to grab her and hold her still but he had never tried to truly touch her in this place without an invitation.

“I wish you would see that she's not a Princess of light and goodness. She's a general. War-hardened. When she sent me away it was in the hope I'd come back a soldier to her cause.”

“But surely…”

“No. No excuses. No half hearted explanations. She gave me away. She left me with him and he tried to murder me as I slept. And after... after when I told her what he'd done, she defended him.”

The rage he'd felt whenever he thought of Luke had faded as his old mentor’s body dissolved, becoming one with the Force. He tried to summon it again, to draw strength from his hatred. But as his former tormentors dropped one by one he felt himself cleansed, freed from that anger. Only Leia remained now. Only she fed his hatred. He could feel the balance shifting inside him. He tried to hate Rey but all he wanted was to touch her hand again.

“She wanted you to learn how to use the Force. Do you think it was easy for her? Leaving you? Sending you away? You're her son.”

Ben looked away.

“I'm done now. You can go,” he said.

“That's not how this works,” Rey said.

She stood there refusing to move, half in her world, half in his.

“When you closed the door. On Crait. When you left me there and closed the door…” he started.

“I thought you didn't want to turn. That you didn't want to come back!” 

“I don't. When you left, I thought you'd abandoned that plan. I thought you'd given up on me.” His voice dipped down low. “But you haven't, have you?”

Rey shook her head. She was fizzing inside, so many contrasting emotions. He could sense her confusion and hatred, tinged with fear. He could sense something else, hidden beneath the layers. He wanted to push everything else out of the way and reveal what she was trying to hide. He thought he detected the faint glimmer of compassion. 

“I see the struggle in you, Ben. I see the doubt. You don't have to do this. If you leave, the First Order will fall apart. You can restore peace to the Galaxy. I know you're tired of fighting. I can feel it, Ben. I'm tired too.”

She'd said it before. The last time had been in the Throne Room with Snoke’s dead body lying discarded and broken on the ground. He'd held on to Anakin’s lightsaber with a death grip as if he could somehow draw the strength to stand his ground from it.

He'd fought so long. Survived Luke, survived Snoke. Surely not to crawl back to his mother in the end? To beg her forgiveness with his tail between his legs. How would she ever forgive him for what he'd done? The murder of that space pirate, Han Solo, his father.

“How could I go back, Rey? Even if I wanted to? How do I ask her to forgive that?”

It was too late for that. Even Leia knew it. How could she forgive the Supreme Leader of the First Order?

Supreme Leader. Now that he had what he'd worked towards he felt nothing. No pride, no ambition. Emptiness. He had the Galaxy on a string and he didn't give a damn. _Stick to your guns. Stand by your decisions. Don't stop til you've won._ Well, he won. It felt like losing.

“You just… do. You just ask her. It starts with coming back.”

She sounded so young. What did she know? She never had a mother. What did she know about it?

"I thought I didn't deserve to be her son?"

“Ben, please.”

She was holding out her hand. It was a cheap trick, laughable. Such a poor, clumsy attempt at seduction. He didn't care. He started to reach for her and stopped himself.

“You know I can't give you what you want.” 

“You don't know what I want.”

She reached forward so fast, gripped his hand before he could stop her. _When the going gets tough… lightspeed._

He pulled her close, felt her surprise like a supernova. 

“Tell me,” he said.

She sucked in her breath. They were light-years apart and yet he could feel her trembling in his arms. Could feel the rough spun cloth of her garments against his bare skin. She didn't tell him, she placed her hands to either side of his face and covered his mouth with her own. 

He saw them, when she kissed him. He saw them and so did Rey. Every soul in a thousand systems. A hundred thousand. Like pinpoints of brightness against the black. Not light and dark but the sum of them, Jedi and Sith no longer. He saw the future, the present and the past. He saw everything that was fall to dust. Beneath it all they remained.

“Look at them, Ben,” Rey murmured. “Just look at them.” 

He saw how there could be balance in the Galaxy. He saw how they could do it. _Come._ He saw them calling out together. _Come to us. Come in your multitudes. Come. Heal the rift in the Galaxy. There is no light. No darkness. Only us._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very very much to Bakerstreetafternoon for editing this and encouraging me and generally being around for Star Wars (and Beatles) chats. You're the loveliest. I adore you.
> 
> Thank you to and-then-bam-cassiopeia and Byzantinefox for being cool and still chatting with me about Star Wars and politics for the last two years. It's always a pleasure. Yay Imperial dogs! Check out and-then-bam-cassiopeia's fanfiction on here if you haven't already. Brilliant!
> 
> Thanks to my bro for adding poodoo. And watching TLJ with me. Twice.
> 
> The title is from Les Mis. "Stars, in your multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness, with order and light..."


End file.
